IPPN

Concerns raised over child safety and privacy online [thejournal.ie]

Published: 12 October 2011

A NEW STUDY commissioned by the ISPCC has found that one in six secondary school students in Ireland has met, in person, someone they initially met online.

The survey involved 18,116 young people around Ireland aged from eight to 18. More than four out of ten (44 per cent) of respondents in the secondary school/youth category said they use the internet in their own bedroom, while a quarter of young people in this category said they did not use privacy settings.

Over a third of the primary school group said they did not how to keep their social network account private.

Full Story: www.thejournal.ie

Back to school bill €5m over budget after applications soar [IrishExaminer]

Published: 11 October 2011

THE bill for helping families with the cost of school uniforms could be €5 million over budget when the remaining 19,500 applications are processed.

Social Protection Minister Joan Burton’s department had paid out €72m to almost 160,000 families up to the start of last month — almost the same number of recipients as all of last year.

But another 35,000 applications for the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance were still to be processed at the time and a further 10,000 families applied up to the closing date on September 30.

This brought total claims this year to 90,000, in addition to 127,000 households that automatically received the payment by July on foot of qualifying last year.

Full Story: www.examiner.ie

Book publishers agree to bulk discounts for schools [IrishTimes]

Published: 11 October 2011

SCHOOLS ARE to receive substantial discounts when they buy in bulk for school book rental schemes.

All the main educational publishers confirmed last night that schools purchasing in bulk for the rental schemes will gain discounts of up to 17.5 per cent.

The breakthrough came after a meeting between the publishers and Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn – the Minister’s second meeting with the educational book publishers since taking up office.

After the first meeting in June, eight educational publishers agreed a new voluntary code of practice.

Full Story: www.irishtimes.com

Minister Quinn meets with Educational Book Publishers to Reduce School Book Costs [merrionstreet.ie]

Published: 11 October 2011

The Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn TD has welcomed the commitment by the main educational publishers to give substantial discounts to schools that run book rental schemes.

The commitment was made at a meeting yesterday with representatives of the publishers which was called to discuss proposals to reduce the cost of school books for parents.

This was the second meeting with the publishers since the Minister took up office.

Mr Quinn had proposed that schools which purchase textbooks in bulk should be given a significant discount.

Full Story: www.merrionstreet.ie

Cost of school books to be reduced to loan schemes [thejournal.ie]

Published: 11 October 2011

THE COST OF school books will be lowered for students in schools that run book rental schemes.

Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn TD said today he welcomes the commitment by the main educational publishers to give “substantial discounts” to schools that run such book rental schemes.

The Minister said:

"My main objective in proposing these measures is to ensure that costs to students and their families are kept to a minimum and I believe that the steps achieved to-date will contribute substantially to achieving this objective.